Twenty years ago, around the time that he and other improvisers from what was still the Soviet Union became subjects of much amazement in the U.S., pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin surprised everyone by emigrating from Lithuania to Israel—he was fleeing anti-Semitism, but in terms of jazz, it was as if he were exchanging a spot on the dark side of the moon for another not nearly as bright. Much has changed since then. For one thing, the demise of Communism seems to have resulted in an economy entirely based on white slavery and credit card fraud, which ought to be enough to make fans of Ronald Reagan think twice. For another, Israel—of all places—has started producing jazz talent and exporting it here. New York is now home to not one but two young Israel-born musicians named Avishai Cohen, one a bassist and former sideman with Chick Corea, the other a trumpeter and brother to saxophonist and clarinetist Anat Cohen. Though hardly comparable to the legion of hard-boppers nurtured by Detroit and Philadelphia in the '50s, the list of transplanted Israelis is long and growing—for starters, pianist Anat Fort, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur, bassist Omer Avital, violinist Miri Ben-Ari, and saxophonists Danny Zamir, Ori Kaplan, Eli Degibri, Ohad Talmor (born in France and raised in Switzerland, but of Israeli extraction), and Gilad Atzmon (U.K. jazz's reigning bad boy, a Palestinian sympathizer who describes himself as "a former Israeli... More >>>